When the roof falls in on your dreams

JEANNIE WILKINS did not always rattle around her 17-bedroom manor house in Somerset. In fact, she bought Chapel Cleeve Manor, a handsome Grade- II listed pile, 13 years ago with her partner Mike. They planned to restore the house and create the home of their dreams.

However, the 45-room home they fell in love with was not big enough for the two of them and after 33 years together Mike left and Jeannie now lives in the house with only her six cats for company.

Instead of selling and walking away, Jeannie bought out Mike with the result that her restoration reverie has crumbled into a lonesome nightmare which has left her on the verge of bankruptcy.

With a large mortgage and a tiny income from a cottage on the estate and her mother’s bungalow, Jeannie enlisted the help of entrepreneur and businessman Simon Davis, the new presenter of the television series Country House

Rescue, to help her find a way of saving the house which boasts a 100ft Edwardian gallery, a grand ballroom, 18 habitable rooms and seven acres.

Jeannie, 63, has known Chapel Cleeve, near Exmoor National Park in Minehead, all her life and had attended dances there in her teens.

The wood panelled charm of the manor's dressing room

She could not believe her luck when it came up for auction 13 years ago and she and Mike bought it for £360,000.

In its time Chapel Cleeve has been a private house, a hotel, a restaurant and a venue for raves and even today, with the right investment, would make a magnificent hotel. The Queen and Princess Margaret were frequent visitors in its heyday but now it is home to one lone woman who cannot afford to put the heating on.

Galloping to her rescue (or rather chugging along the Somerset country lanes in his car) Simon attempts to find solutions to put Jeannie’s dream back on track.

This proves a tough task since the house was a wreck when she bought it and has been crumbling at an alarming rate.

I have no liquid gold; I am fighting fires all the time

Jeannie Wilkins

One idea he moots is to offer visitors ghost walks through the house’s extensive cellars in partnership with a theatrical troupe and the local steam railway (you can see the old train puffing across the landscape from the ballroom).

Another idea which has taken root is to offer the house as a blank canvas to students from Somerset College who are studying construction, plastering and decorating. No money would change hands but Jeannie would get her house done up for free and the students would get to work on a real project.

Another scheme involves charities leasing a wing for office space.

“I have no liquid gold; I am fighting fires all the time,” says Jeannie who is facing a bill of about £500,000 to put her house back together.

“The house has had a chequered history and I would like to preserve it for future generations.” She has even put it

up for sale in case her plans fail.

Jeannie is a local girl and spent most of her life working in the packaging industry. She has no children and gave up the chance of having a family as her partner was much older and already had grown-up children.

Now he has gone she risks losing the only other love in her life – her house.

BECAUSE of its listed status she is limited in what she can do to it.

She had hoped to convert one wing into five apartments which could be sold or rented but the council will not allow that.

“Crazy rules and regulations are stifling the chance of a new life for this house,” she says.

“Organisations designed to protect it, like English Heritage, would rather see the building collapse than offer help to

“I can cope with the physical effort of working on it and the mental effort of trying to think of ways of keeping it going but the emotional strain of doing it all on my own is very hard.

"Mike and I wanted to make it into a family home because Mike has children and grandchildren but now that will never be.

“To restore a country estate like this you have to have a bottomless pit of money, a load of passion and a strong relationship.

“The Government and English Heritage are going to have to change their ways or houses like these will crumble to dust,” she says.

“At the moment their policies condemn more properties than they save.”

On top of all that, neighbours want Jeannie to cut down some ancient trees.

Simon Davis visited six houses in England, Ireland and Scotland for Country House Rescue. “None of the owners had inherited the properties,” he says.

“They are all ordinary people with no money trying to revive crumbling country houses. Some of the people seem

bonkers, taking on impossible tasks particularly in the present climate. I had to come up with imaginative ideas like ones where no money changed hands, such as at Chapel Cleeve, where I invited students from the local college to

get real experience honing their plastering, electrical and carpentry skills while the owner gets work done for free.

“Offering space to local charities was another idea but owners have to compromise, such as sacrificing personal space.

“At another house we looked at installing a café and inviting schoolchildren to sponsor rows of vegetables in the garden and help tend it.

“This creates an involvement and, hopefully, an enduring bond and interest while the owner gets their garden looked after for free.”

SIMON fell under the spell of wanting to restore his own crumbling ruin and bought an old presbytery in Normandy.

“Properties like this were one tenth of the price of similar ones in England and my wife and I bought this old Norman barn for under £90,000. We did it up for about £15,000 and then sold it two years later for £160,000. So I do have

some experience of getting my hands dirty.

“That is what I want to do in this series of Country House Rescue.

Unlike the previous presenter Ruth Watson, who just went to view the properties and set herself apart, I wanted to get stuck in. So I stayed the night and had dinner with the owners.

“I will go back and see how things work out because you get quite attached but owners have to be realistic and to be prepared to make compromises.”